Tag Archives: food

Colombianizing the Fourth of July

Nationality: Haitian-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Southern California
Performance Date: April 24, 2018
Primary Language: English

Originally from Florida, this friend of mine grew up around a wide range of cultures and traditions. Raised by Haitian and Colombian immigrants, she speaks Haitian-Creole, French, English, and a little bit of Spanish. We share a love of food, and spend a lot of time talking about food and different recipes and whatnot, so when this project came down the pipeline, I knew I had to ask her about some unique, family recipes.

The following was recorded during a group interview with 4 other of our friends in the common area of a 6-person USC Village apartment.

“And then Fourth of July dinner – that’s the day my dad really likes to make the sliders with like the cheese inside. Yeah, and then he puts like pineapple jam and like pink sauce – it’s so good. He’s Columbian, so he likes to … Colombinize, Colombianize food.”

This is a perfect example of cultural fusion. To take the most American food there is on the most American holiday there is and ‘Colombianize’ the two is literally what America is all about. We come from all over the world to share our cultures and make something new and beautiful and wholly original.

Řízek

Nationality: Czech
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: N/A
Performance Date: 4/13/18
Primary Language: Czech
Language: English, Spanish, French

Interviewer: You said you had a family recipe?

Informant: So you take a piece of meat, usually it would be turkey or pork, but it could be whatever honestly. A lot of people use chicken. You first flatten it out by hitting it, so you basically make it into a flat piece of meat. Then, you have three key steps.

First, You have flour. You put the meat into the flour and cover it all with flour. Then, there’s egg, beaten, you cover the whole thing in the beaten egg. The final step, you cover the whole thing in breadcrumbs, that you would traditionally make yourself from old leftover bread. Then, you fry the whole thing, flip it in the middle of the frying process.

Interviewer: Then serve?

Informant: Yeah, then serve. Usually you would serve it with mashed potato and a pickle.

Interviewer: You said your family modified the recipe a bit?

Informant: Every family does it a little different. What changes usually is the type of meat people use, whether or not they add other stuff to the mix. Maybe herbs or something, each family uses different things. Furthermore, you could not use meat at all. A lot of people just use different vegetables and make this recipe with them, which strays further away from the original recipe but, it’s still a variation that’s common. Personally, me and my family use turkey. We think it gets the most tender during the frying. Also, we add a few small pieces of rosemary into the batter , not a lot, but enough for it to be noticed.

Context: My informant is a nineteen year old Czech national attending school in the United States. He’s lived in Prague for most of his life, and Czech is his first language. The interview was conducted face-to-face in a college dorm room.

Background: My informant was taught how to make Řízek by his grandmother while back home in Prague. He likes Řízek because Czech cuisine is a fusion of German, Austrian, and Slavic cuisines, and as a result doesn’t have many uniquely Czech dishes. My informant told me that, because of this, Řízek is considered a sort of “national dish” in the Czech Republic, and is thus close to his heart. My informant himself has made it many times, and considers Řízek one of his favorite dishes.

Analysis: Usually, recipes don’t strike one as the material for folklore, but Řízek is an excellent example of the malleability and word-to-mouth nature of cuisine. The dish apparently had origins stemming from Italian “chicken parmesan”, but used flour and breadcrumbs to make up for a lack of flour. From there, ingenuity led to it further being changed, to the degree that the meat, herbs, and even recipe of the batter itself are subject to interpretation. Řízek is a dish of variation, everyone makes it differently. I also found it interesting that the dish was considered uniquely Czech. Considering that the Czech Republic is still a young country, it appears to be a valuable source of national pride. One might note the use of folklore in this instance to reinforce a nationalistic attitude.

 

The Origin of the Řízek

Nationality: Czech
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: N/A
Performance Date: 4/13/18
Primary Language: Czech
Language: English, Spanish, French

Interviewer: So you just gave me a recipe for… I’m not going to try and pronounce it. You said you also have a story about its origin?

Informant: Yeah, during some battle of the Austrian-Hungarian army in Italy, the general that led his battalion there from the army saw the locals making some sort of food where they would take a piece of meat and cover it in parmesan and fry it. He thought, “well how could I recreate this for our emperor when we don’t have parmesan back home?” So, when he got back from the war, he had the chef at the royal palace recreate the recipe and that’s how this recipe came about

Interviewer: I assume the general was Czech?

Informant: Yeah, yeah.

Context: My informant is a nineteen year old Czech national attending school in the United States. He’s lived in Prague for most of his life, and Czech is his first language. The interview was conducted face-to-face in a college dorm room.

Background: My informant probably learned this story from his grandmother. He remembers it because Řízek is a traditional food that every Czech person knows how to make. He places great importance on this story because it disputes the Austrian and Hungarian claims to Řízek, a food widely considered by the Czech population as their national dish.

Analysis: I personally find this legend very believable. Řízek the food closely resembles chicken parmesan from Italy, and the story itself is quite believable from a historical sense. The Austro-Hungarian army was in Italy, and a general would conceivably had seen the traditional Italian dish prepared. From a more objective perspective, this story legend is also interesting because, despite being a Czech legend, it refers to a time period before the Czech people had an actual sovereign nation, but is still used to reinforce the claims of the Czech people on Řízek.

Mao Zedong’s Birthday

Nationality: Japanese and Chinese American
Age: 18
Occupation: student
Residence: Oahu, Hawaii
Performance Date: 04/16/2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Japanese
  1. The main piece: Mao Zedong’s Birthday

“Okay, so Mao Zedong’s birthday is December 26th, and on that day, we eat long noodles. It’s because if you cut the noodle, you’re cutting his life. Which doesn’t really make sense because he’s dead.”

  1. Background information about the performance from the informant: why do they know or like this piece? Where/who did they learn it from? What does it mean to them? Context of the performance?

“Mao Zedong is the communist leader of China, and he’s very important because he led the communist revolution and changed China forever, for both better and worse.

“Oh yeah, everyone loves Mao. Mao’s on all the money. It’s either Mao or flowers. It’s the day after Christmas and the day before my mom’s birthday.”

  1. Finally, your thoughts about the piece

This tradition of eating long noodles on Mao Zedong’s birthday symbolizes a long life for him, and, accordingly, for the communist nation and ideals that he created. I think that this is a key example of the usage of folklore to build nationalistic sentiment and to increase feelings of personal connection and importance to central sociopolitical powers. Even though the informant is from a later generation from the one in which Mao Zedong was active and alive, the fact that this tradition continues years after, even after his death, shows the lasting impact of using folklore as a nation-state building device.

  1. Informant Details

The informant is an 18-year old female of Japanese and Chinese descent. She grew up in Oahu, Hawaii in a family that had moved there five generations earlier, and explained how none of her parents or grandparents knew any Japanese or Chinese. Celebrating Japanese and Chinese cultural traditions helped her feel more connected to her heritage growing up, because she felt that her parents and grandparents were very disconnected from the culture other than with these traditions.

Panes con Pollo y Rellenos de Papa

Nationality: Salvadoran-American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 20, 2018
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Main Piece:

 

The following is transcribed from a conversation between the performer (KA) and I (ZM).

 

KA: For Christmas, um, my mom tends to make panes con pollo and for like my birthday because I ask for it, she makes rellenos de papa.

ZM: What is panes con…

KA: Panes con pollo? So we have what we call… bolío, or frances. Mexican people call it… um… I believe its bolio and we call it frances. I may be mixing it up though. It’s the exact same thing. It’s bread. And do you know what a torta is?

ZM: Uhhhh…

KA: Okay so a torta is kinda like a sandwich, but in a specific type of bread and Mexican people tend to make it. So, it’s a Mexican dish. So we use the same bread and we put like chicken in it. And there’s like this special sauce that you like put… I guess it would, it’s like tomato. Is it tomato sauce? Yeah. You have to… I don’t know how to make it. And then you put like vegetables in it and that’s how you would eat it. Kind of like a…

ZM: Like a sandwich?

KA: Kind of like a… Yeah, like a sandwich and then… But, like a moist sandwich because you put the sauce…And then rellenos de papa… It’s potato cut in half. So, you’ll peel the potato and then you’ll cut it in half, and you’ll put cheese in it, and then you would, um… you whisk egg and you dip it in the egg, and then you kinda like… It’s not fried, but it’s, it’s cooked like that. And then you would make like tomato sauce and you would put that on top and you can put cheese on top, if you want.

 

Context: This performance was recorded from a conversation with KA about her heritage and Salvadoran culture.

 

Background: KA was born in El Salvador but raised in South Central Los Angeles. She is a junior at the University of Southern California.

 

Analysis:I was unfamiliar with both dishes discussed. One of them seemed pretty much just like a sandwich, but the stuffed potato was the most interesting to me. I haven’t heard of any similar dishes.